A "bio-piracy" case to watch: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/international/africa/21lake.html?_r=1 (free registration required). Some earlier reports ( http://www.grain.org/bio-ipr/?id=409 ) mention that Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors, Inc. (http://www.piipa.org/) have been retained

It's an unheard of, 8-month old case from a negligible jurisdiction in global terms, but potentially interesting to bloggers and bloggees nevertheless: HCJ 2587/04 Bukhris et al. v. Hedera Tax Assessor, 23.6.05, a petition brought before the Israeli Supreme Court sitting as High Court

For all we know, the GMO panel faulted the EC on two grounds.  First, EC approval procedures have been subject to “undue delay” (Annex C.1(a)).  Second, safeguard restrictions imposed by certain EC member states against GMOs that were approved at the EC level, are not based on a

A number of recent panels have dealt with scheduling issues. In GATS especially, there seems to be dissatisfaction across Members with the manne rin which the Mexico - Telecoms and the US - Gambling reports came out. The former clearly states in a rather lengthy footnote that moving away from what was

There is an interesting review of Sunstein's controversial book - The Laws of Fear - and a reply by Cass Sunstein in the Feb. issue of the Harvard Law Review. The review is by Paul Slovic among others and takes issue with Sunstein for ignoring cultural perceptions on risk. The

The proposed legislation to ban foreign-government-owned firms from managing US ports has been defended by some as a national security measure. At some level of generality, of course, GATT law regards national security claims as self judging and therefore unreviewable (I have a discussion of this issue in

Well, I woke up early this morning, checked my e-mail and saw a notification from the WTO that the chat was about to begin.  I thought to myself "I'm late, so I will never get admitted--the limit is 500 chatters."  I suppose I got

Senator Clinton apparently has introduced legislation that would bar firms owned by foreign states from managing US ports. The bill is aimed at the takeover of P & O, a company that currently manages six US ports, by Dubai Ports World, which belongs to the United Arab Emirates. The purported

The U.S. Treasury is considering whether to label China a "currency manipulator."  Apparently, this designation would have certain effects under 22 U.S.C. 5304, 5305 and 286y .  A 2005 Treasury report states that Title 22 U.S.C. 5304 requires, inter alia, that the Secretary of

Mittal is playing the WTO card on the French steel investment issue, courtesy of Kamal Nath, Indian trade minister (see Reuters report). From the sidelines, and without any prejudice to the merits of the Indian claims themselves, there is something poetically just about this development. See how Nath almost gleefully